But which economists or investors share his view? Wall Street, the government, and the media is in denial, just as they were in denial about the stock market and housing bubbles.
One of the reasons that a lot of people ignore the “we’re running out of oil!” predictions is that they’ve been going on for about 100 years. I read in the Economist one time that this is (approx) the 6th time we’ve been “running out of oil”.
The Economist said that the problem isn’t a lack of oil, but where the oil is that’s the problem. So much of it is in the middle-east and it’s concentrated there. Certainly an issue, geo-politically, as we’re seeing right now.
We’ll never “run out of oil”. It will simply get expensive enough over time (with spikes and troughs) that alternatives will be demanded and will be commercially viable. Right now, the price is high enough for people like Toyota to truly innovate with their hybrid engines. 10 years ago that would have been stupid as Americans would have laughed at these silly little cars while pumping $1/gallon gasoline.
If oil/gas gets expensive enough (whatever that turns out to be) Americans will get over their issues with “nukular” power and start buying plug-in hybrids with all the fancy new battery technology we’ll be inventing over the coming years.
